Of all the modern plagues, the “Forward” button is one of the most vexing. It combines the worst attributes of chain letters and small town gossip with advanced technology, allowing dissemination of nonsense and lies at a speed heretofore unknown.

The creators of the email standard added the function reluctantly, but they tried to warn us. The “FW:” notation in the subject line is shorthand for the Latin phrase “Fractitus Withinus“, or “Crap Enclosed”.

We all have the family member who likes to “keep in touch”, and believes that is not accomplished by writing a personal note, but by clicking a button in an email reader to mindlessly send garbage our way. It is a practice made all the more despicable by the appearance of good intentions.

It would be one thing if the “forward” actually represented the views of the automaton clicking the forward button. But the forwarder usually falls back on the first defense of scoundrels and hypocrites: “Oh, I don’t agree with it, I just thought it was interesting!”

No, it wasn’t interesting. It was, pick one, scandalous, libelous, a damnable lie or horrendously mistaken. And yes, you do agree with it, because you published it under your name and thought enough of it to send it to me.

I recently set up a filter for another relative that trashed all of the email from a particular individual. She had gotten into the habit of clicking “delete” as soon as she saw the sender’s name in an email. Gmail keeps a copy of email for a while, and it had already identified some of the sender’s email as “junk”. A quick search showed this individual sent 1,500 “forwards” of crap in the last 90 days. That’s about 17 per day: this sender was a serial forwarder. Or, a “Constantus Fractitus Withinus” (Latin for a “constant crap sender”).

You would kill a dog that deposited that many landmines in your front yard, no matter how much he wagged his tail during his deposit.

While I didn’t look at all of the emails, the relative assures me my suspicion was right: the person never added anything to them. They weren’t even original crap, but second-hand crap. This person thought so little of her friends that she didn’t even use her own crap; she “re-gifted” someone else’s crap!